Top Online Poker Players BOYCOTT PokerStars

Leading online tournament players have led a boycott for the PokerStars $5200 buy-in Turbo Series tournament which featured a $750,000 guaranteed prize pool. Top Belgian online MTT player “girafganger7”, who sits at 4th in the PocketFives rankings, was dissatisfied with the latest changes to the rake changes for tournaments and reached out to his peers to see what could be done.

“The nonstop rake increases and unbeatable formats they have been pushing on all of us, with the latest one pushing me over the edge, made me reach out to some of the high-stakes regs to try and convince them to skip the 5k psko turbo as a protest.”

PokerStars needed to hit a 150 entrant field to make the guarantee and just made it with 162, ultimately meaning the protest did not work, or at least as intended. A list of 192 top players who agreed to join the boycott was posted on the PocketFives website, meaning that it is likely the tournament field was at least cut in half. Included on this list were both of the top two players on the PocketFives rankings and stars such as Steve O'Dwyer, Chance Kornuth, Jason Koon and Mustapha Kanit.

“Girafganger7” posted a well-written statement on Medium outlining exactly what players are dissatisfied with and what changes they want made. It wasn’t all negative though, he did give credit for how PokerStars has transformed the lives of many professional players around the world.

“PokerStars has a had a huge positive impact on so many of our lives, some professionals would likely have very different lives had it not been for them — myself included.”

Although PokerStars may be able to claim victory in this skirmish, the amount of negative publicity has been extraordinarily high and is a step backwards in the war. Their most high-profile rival partypoker was also quick to fire shots on social media with their own competing event occuring at the same time.

“There are only 45-minutes to wait until the massive $1 million guaranteed #KOSeries Super High Roller shuffles up and deals. Which player do you think is destined for glory? Perhaps @Girafganger7 or maybe a #teampartypoker member”.